World News Quick Take

AGENCIES

■ PHILIPPINES

Nine killed in land dispute

Armed residents clashed with police protecting demolition crews that were clearing illegal shanties in Kalinga Province, killing at least nine residents and wounding 10 officers, officials said yesterday. Police were on their way to the squatters colony in Rizal on Monday when settlers in foxholes and trenches opened fire, Chief Superintendent Raul Gonzales said. Five men were arrested and several firearms and grenades seized, he said. A lawyer for the residents, Rustico Gagate, said the fatalities included an old woman and elderly men, all Kalinga natives who were in the village to reclaim their ancestral land. He said 50 residents were brought to a hospital for treatment.

■ CHINA

Japan accused of abduction

A North Korean woman accused Japan yesterday of abducting her in 2003. To Chu-ji told a news conference at the North Korean embassy in Beijing that she was "abducted by bad people" while she was in North Korea in October 2003. To said she was taken to the Japanese consulate in Shenyang. She flew to Japan two weeks later after negotiations between Beijing and Tokyo. To said she left Japan last Thursday to return to the North. Japanese Foreign Ministry deputy spokesman Noriyuki Shikata denied that the woman had been abducted. "We are assuming that the person who held the press conference is someone who we have identified. That lady fled from North Korea in November 2003," he said. To was born in Japan in 1949 and went to the North in 1960 with her North Korean father and Japanese mother.

■ CHINA

Lightning kills tomb workers

Lightning struck a tomb in Zhejiang Province and killed five people working around it, Xinhua news agency reported yesterday. Seven workers were caught on a small hill near Zhiwan Village by a heavy thunderstorm on Monday afternoon. Five were killed on the spot and one injured, while the seventh escaped unharmed to raise the alarm, Xinhua said.

■ HONG KONG

Police find body in suitcase

Police are investigating the death of a woman whose body was discovered dumped inside a suitcase on Monday evening. The badly decomposed body was in a suitcase placed inside a manhole near some luxury homes in Stanley, the police said. The cause of death has yet to be determined or the woman's identity established. Police said the victim's feet were bound with a towel and it was believed she had been dead for at least three days.

The body was discovered after a maid reported to police that an odd smell was coming from a manhole.

■ NETHERLANDS

Anne Frank items released

Anne Frank's cousin gave up custody on Monday of thousands of letters, photographs and documents that archivists say will reveal details about the background of the teenage diarist who became a symbol of the Holocaust. Bernhard "Buddy" Elias, 82, had kept the materials for decades in his Swiss attic before permanently loaning them to the Anne Frank House -- the museum incorporating the tiny apartment where the family hid during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands -- to mark Monday's 60th anniversary of the first publication of The Diary of Anne Frank.

■ SOMALIA

Five killed in Mogadishu

Police fired on a crowd of people trying to storm a food warehouse in Mogadishu on Monday, and five civilians were killed, witnesses said. Hundreds of people had gathered at a police station that had been turned into a food distribution center, said Halima Mudey, who was in the crowd. "People were waiting for the distribution of the food, but some of them tried to storm and steal the maize and cooking oil, then police opened fire and killed five people including my brother," Abdiqadir Mohamed Ilbir said as he wept. He said his brother was shot and killed by the police.